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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

How did vaunted Romney Death Star break down?

Byron York

A few days before the January 31 Florida Republican primary, a number of Mitt Romney’s top aides took to the pages of the New York Times to brag about how they had destroyed Newt Gingrich. The former House Speaker had beaten
Romney badly just a few days earlier in South Carolina; a loss in
Florida might have unalterably changed the GOP race. So the Times
reported that “a team of some of the most fearsome researchers in the
business, led by Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, spent days
dispensing negative information about Mr. Gingrich.”

That was an understatement. Team Romney not only dropped oppo
research on Gingrich; before it was all over, Romney and his SuperPAC
allies spent about $15 million on ads in Florida, three times what
Gingrich and his supporters spent. And all — literally all — of it was
on negative advertising. “The only positive Romney ad aired over the
past week was single Spanish-language radio ad,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl
reported when it was over. Romney’s assault completely dominated the
airwaves; 68 percent of all ads aired in Florida were Romney attacks on
Gingrich. It worked; Romney won Florida handily.

No matter who they supported, many Republicans felt uneasy as they
watched the intra-party war unfold. Many — voters and insiders alike —
remarked that when the general election campaign came around, Romney had
better attack Barack Obama with the same ferocity he attacked
Gingrich. (And, at other times in the primary season, Rick Perry and
Rick Santorum.) Otherwise, it would look like Romney took more relish
in attacking fellow Republicans than in taking on Obama. Romney had won
the Republican nomination in significant part by operating a death star —
a machine that could rain down holy hell on opponents, if that’s what
winning required. He had better give the same treatment to Obama.